Does anyone have any experience with bamboo Pu Erh as well as Golden Melon Pu Erh tea and if so what were your thoughts about it? I saw some of it up on an ebay store that caught my eye and wanted to know if anyone had anyone had any experience with either and if so how you thought it compared to Adagio's Pu Erh Dante blend - my current favorite tea. Aso to put things into prespective the only other Pu Erh tea that I've had was from Stash (both their loose and mini cake forms) and to be quite honest I could not taste any difference so to me the deciding factore was that Adagio's Pu Erh was cheaper (even after you take Stash's buy 3 get 1 free policy into consideration) and as an added bonus comes in a nice metal tin instead of the zip lock bags that Stash uses for their loose tea.

Sorry to contradict you Lana, but Adagio's puerh is mearly ok.
I've had some truely excelent puerh from other vendors, both compressed and loose. I've found that the compressed variety is much better than the loose, in general.
Here are a few sites:
www.pu-erh.net This one is informational, and the best resource in the west on pu.
www.jingteashop.com Very helpful vendor. Ask a question, get a good answer!
http://stores.ebay.com/Yunnan-Sourcing-LLC This is a good source, but buyer beware! He's not very knowledgable about pu, so get advice on what to buy before you buy.
www.imperialtea.com Pricey but reliable.
and last but not least:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.food.drink.teaNeed good advice? Check here.

Marlene wrote:If you plan on getting very seriously into puerh tea I'd also recomend you get a zisha clay or yixing tea pot. A small one around 7/8 oz.

Thanks for the info about the pots, I was actually considering picking up one for my Pu Erh, once I get around to reading up on them so I know how to properly use and take care of it before hand. The only thing is do I need a different pot for each type of Pu Erh or are they close enough to use the same pot for all of my Pu Erh tea?

At the moment I'm just curious about if the traditional Pu Erh cakes have a different taste as compared to the "more modern" loose Pu Erh tea that Adagio stocks. At the same time I do not have any interest in the aged Pu Erh tea because they cost too much, thus I'm afraid to even try them just in case they do to Adagio's non-aged Pu Erh the same thing that Adagio tea did to my ironically more expensive Twinings teas.

If you plan on getting really into pu, then you might eventually want to get more than one. One for cooked or shu and one for raw or sheng (or was that the other way around?). one for young ones, one for old ones, one for bamboo pu, one for lychee pu...you could end up with a serious collection. As it is, i've got 2 pots. one for oolongs, one for pu (I usually brew up greens in my gaiwain). My avatar pic is my Oolong pot. The pic is a bit squished, it's actually a bit flatter than you see. Don't buy one from a local tea shop unless you trust the owner. You could end up with a 3 dollar pot for 30 bucks.
Careing for them is easy. They're tough little suckers. I've already managed to break 7 or 8 cups and 2 tea pots, but my yixing ones never chip or break! When you get it, wash it well. Don't worry overly much about 'seasoning' it. All you're doing when you season a pot is hastening what happens naturally. You know that black crap that builds up on the inside of your pot when you don't wash it for days and days (or am I the only one...) That's what you're trying to accomplish with a yixing. So never ever soap it up! Rinse it under running water and wipe with a cloth. Also, some cross use is common. But whatever you do, don't brew up a scented or flavored tea!!!! I had jasmine flavored oolong for a month!
The difference between loose and compressed pu isn't great for the first year or so (exept for the tendancy for loose to be lower quality, adagio's is good for a loose. The operative word here is TENDANCY. they aren't all crappy). Once you start aging pu, there is a difference. Mostly because the compressed stuff is easier to store. Start down the road to buying aged pu erhs cautiously and with a lot of help from Mike Petro. Anything more than 3-5 years can get pricey. You can always buy young and age 'em yourself! If you plan on doing that, buy your tu chas and bing chas in pairs, although the bings can be big enough for you to try and age at the same time.
Good luck!
Marlene
PS. Where is MikeB when you actually WANT him to try some of his potty humor?

I placed an order with Yunnan sourcing off of ebay for some Pu erh tea. I just guessed and ordered two or three, Marlene is right he does not give much advice. So does anyone out there have any recommendations of which ones to buy from yunnan? I am new to pu erh's , the one from adagio seemed good to me, i got used to it after a few times drinking it.

Yes if you want to try some Puerh bricks I'd recommend going to Ten Tea first as they have the cheapest price for Puerh cakes that I've found to date as if you are new I'd say that it is not worth spending a lot of money on Puerh yet. If you are anything like me, it took me a while to be able to taste the difference between different types of Puerh or even a good one and a bad one but once I could Adagio's Pu Erh Danta quickly became my least favorite of every one that I tried. Although I'd recommend that you avoid that "Gift Puerh Tea Cake" as the others as I think it was made more for show. Ten Tea also offers green/raw Puerh here that I missed the first time I ordered because it was buried in the green tea section, which would probably work out well to experiment with ageing Puerh. Or of you are simply looking for blocks that taste good, I'd recommend the Haichao Puerh blocks that enjoyingtea.com sells (misfiled under the instant tea section) which is actually one of my favorite Puerh teas which as an added bonus the description is wrong as it does not contain 22 blocks but two rows of 22 blocks each on top of each other. Or at least that is my advice from a "Puerh on a seminary student budget" approach, which focuses on cheap Puerhs that taste good once I was able to taste the difference.

Well, for the people asking what advice to give for buying Puerh... if you want your "smooth, mellow" experience, then go with cooked puerh cakes that YunnanSourcing sells. If you want real Puerh then buy the raw ones, leave it around in a cool and dry place for 20 years, then try it. That's a little hard to do though.

I have never tried Pu-erh tea before but I bought a 350 gram Awazon Royal Pu-erh cake from YunnanSourcing on ebay. It is very smooth and mellow. My wife and I like it a lot. I took it to a friends house and he, his wife and both of their mothers all wanted me to order them some as well. I don't know how it compares to all the other kinds but it might be worth your trying it. They were out when I went to place an order for my friends but hopefully they will get it back in.

There are high grades and low grades of both. Menghai golden needle white lotus shou cake is going to be much smoother and less 'pondy' than a cheaper xiaguan cooked brick. Also, there are sheng cakes meant to be drunk now, as well as loose-leaf sheng that can be drunk now or aged.

My usual recommendation (is this record broken?): consider buying samples of stuff you're curious about from vendors like jingteashop and houde. Even dragon tea house and yunnan-sourcing on eBay offer limited samples now. (Houde ships samples for free, but Jing's samples are cheaper, so...)

Also: I haven't had the Awazon cooked cake, but I've had their black label and red label 2006 raw cakes, and they're rather tasty.